Bringg, a startup taking advantage of the shift toward faster, more transparent on-demand delivery, has raised an additional $10 million in Series B funding, the company announced this morning. The funding was led by Aleph VC, and includes participation from Coca-Cola and prior investor Pereg Ventures.
Founded in 2013, Chicago-headquartered Bringg was started by Raanan Cohen, the former founder and CEO of MobileMax; and Lior Sion, previously the CTO of Gett and Clarizen.com. The idea was to provide businesses an easier way to offer an Amazon- or Uber-like level of visibility into their own delivery operations, including consumer-facing features like delivery notifications, the ability to track a driver on a map, driver-to-customer communications, star ratings and more.
For businesses using Bringg’s solution, they’re able to optimize and prioritize their routes and deliveries more efficiently, in real time — something that allows them to better compete with the likes of Amazon, explains Sion.
“Amazon and Uber have pushed the customer expectations to levels we’ve never seen before,” says Sion. “For consumers, it’s now very weird if we order something and it takes a week to come, and we don’t know exactly when it’s coming. The experience is very uncomfortable.”
And the more powerful and efficient operations like Uber and Amazon become, the better it has been for Bringg, whose number of deliveries rose more than 300 percent over the last quarter.
“Retail stores are losing to Amazon, and brands that don’t have direct consumer relationships are getting scared — they’re looking for ways to do direct to consumer sales and direct to consumer deliveries,” says Sion. “We’re democratizing the entire delivery experience that Amazon is trying to take control of,” he adds.
Today, Bringg has hundreds of customers across more than 50 countries, including full delivery chains, parcel delivery services, food delivery services and others, like dry cleaning services or cable repair companies, for example. Businesses pay for Bringg via volume-based pricing.
Many of its clients are large businesses, as well, like investor Coca-Cola, which uses Bringg for a multitude of needs, from handling out-of-stock situations by connecting businesses with the closest wholesaler, to equipment repair operations and even some business-to-consumer operations outside the U.S.
Bringg can’t disclose customer names, but notes that they are not generally startups. They’re businesses that need to optimize the cost of their delivery operations, not just utilize real-time fleet management features. Optimizing routes, drivers and deliveries for the lowest cost is something Bringg can help with, in addition to its ability to integrate into apps and websites through its set of APIs and SDKs for things like real-time maps, alerts, service ratings, communications and more.
It can even help businesses accommodate a variety of delivery modes and providers, like using a mix of in-house and third-party fleets, or expanding fleets with crowd-sourced drivers during busier times, like the holidays.
“Amazon has full visibility from the minute the customer goes on the site, the inventory, the delivery’s first mile and last mile, and the customer experience…this is why they’re killing everyone,” says Sion. “They can optimize everything along the way…Our goal is to provide the same capabilities to our customers. This is the only way, we believe, you can fight Amazon,” he says.
The company, a team of 50, today has offices in Tel Aviv, New York and Chicago, and plans to expand into new markets and new segments with the additional funding. This includes growing its R&D and Operations teams (meaning Sales, Marketing, Account Management and Support).
To date, Bringg has raised $19 million.
Comment